The Hymns of the Rigveda/Preface

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

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“What can be more tedious than the Veda, and yet what can be more interesting, if once we know that it is the first word spoken by the Aryan man?”

“The Veda has a two-fold interest: it belongs to the history of the world and to the history of India. . . . . . . . . As long as man continues to take an interest in the history of his race, and as long as we collect in libraries and museums the relics of former ages, the first place in that long row of books which contains the records of the Aryan branch of mankind, will belong for ever to the Rig-veda.”F. Max Müller.

This work is an attempt to bring within easy reach of all readers of English a translation of the Hymns of the Ṛigveda which, while aiming especially at close fidelity to the letter and the spirit of the original, shall be as readable and intelligible as the nature of the subject and other circumstances permit.

Veda, meaning literally knowledge, is the name given to certain ancient works which formed the foundation of the early religious belief of the Hindus. These are the Ṛigveda, the Sâmaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda; and of these the Ṛigveda—so called because its Sanhitâ or collection of mantras or hymns consists of Ṛichas or verses intended for loud recitation—is the oldest, the most important, and the most generally interesting, some of its hymns being rather Indo-European than Hindu, and representing the condition of the Aryans before their final settlement in India. These four Vedas are considered to be of divine origin and to have existed from all eternity, the Ṛishis or sacred poets to whom the hymns are ascribed being merely inspired seers who saw or received them by sight directly from the Supreme Creator. In accordance with this belief these sacred books have been preserved and handed down with the most reverential care from generation to generation, and have accomaccompanied the great army of Aryan immigrants in their onward march from the Land of the Seven Rivers to the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Each of these four Vedas is divided into two distinct parts, one the Mantra containing prayer and praise, the other the Brâhmana containing detailed directions for the performance of the ceremonies at which the Mantras were to be used, and explanations of the legends connected with them, the whole forming a vast body of sacred literature in verse and in prose, devotional, ceremonial, expository and theosophic.

The Sanhitâ of the Rigveda is a collection of hymns and songs brought by the remote ancestors of the present Hindus from their ancient homes on the banks of the Indus where they had been first used in adoration of the Father of Heaven, of the Sun, of Dawn, of Agni or the God of fire, in prayers for health, wealth, long life, offspring, cattle, victory in battle, and freedom from the bonds of sin; and celebration of the ever-renewed warfare between the beneficent thunder-wielding Indra, the special champion of the Aryans, and the malevolent powers of darkness and the demons of drought who withheld the rain of heaven.

Of these hymns there are more than a thousand, arranged in ten Mandalas, Circles, or Books, in accordance with an ancient tradition of what we should call authorship, the hymns ascribed to the same Rishi, inspired poet or seer, or to the same school or family of Rishis being placed together. Within these divisions the hymns are generally arranged more or less in the order of the deities to whom they are addressed. Agni and Indra are the Gods most frequently invoked. Hymns to Agni generally come first, next come those addressed to Indra, and after them those in honour of other deities or deified objects of adoration. The ninth Book is devoted almost entirely to Soma, the deified juice used in pouring libations to the Gods, and the tenth forms a sort of appendix of peculiar and miscellaneous materials. Independently of the evidence afforded by Indian tradition, there can be no reasonable doubt of the great antiquity of the Rigveda Sanhita which, with the exception of the Egyptian monumental records and papyrus rolls, and the recently discovered Assyrian literature, is probably the oldest literary document in existence. But it seems impossible to fix, with anything approaching to certainty, any date for the composition of the hymns. In the first Hymn of Book I. ancient and recent or modern Ṛishis or seers are spoken of, and there is other internal evidence that some hymns are much older than others. Colebrooke came to the conclusion, from astronomical calculations, that a certain Vedic calendar was composed in the fourteenth century before the Christian era; from which it would follow, that as this calendar must have been prepared after the arrangement of the Ṛigveda and the inclusion of the most modern hymn, the date of the earliest hymn might be carried back, perhaps, some thousand years. The correctness of Colebrooke’s conclusions, however, has been questioned, and some recent scholars consider that his calculations are of a very vague character, and do not yield any such definite date. In the absence of any direct evidence, the opinions of scholars vary and must continue to vary with regard to the age of the Hymns of the Ṛigveda. “The reasons, however,” (to quote Professor Weber^[1]) “by which we are fully justified in regarding the literature of India as the most ancient literature of which written records on an extensive scale have been handed down to us are these:— In the more ancient parts of the Ṛigveda Sanhitâ, we find the Indian race settled on the north-western borders of India, in the Panjáb, and even beyond the Panjáb, on the Kubhá, or Κωφήν, in Kabul. The gradual spread of the race from these seats towards the east, beyond the Sarasvatí and over Hindustán as far as the Ganges, can be traced in the later portions of the Vedic writings almost step by step. The writings of the following period, that of the epic, consist of accounts of the internal conflicts among the conquerors of Hindustán themselves, as, for instance, the Mahábhárata; or of the farther spread of Brahmanism towards the south, as, for instance, the Rámáyaṇa. If we connect with this the first fairly accurate information about India which we have from a Greek source, viz., from Megasthenes,^[2] it becomes clear that at the time of this writer the Brahmanising of Hindustán was already completed, while at the time of the Periplus (see Lassen, I. AK., ii. 150, n; I. St., ii. 192) the very southern-most point of the Dekhan had already become the seat of the worship of the wife of Śiva. What a series of years, of centuries, must necessarily have elapsed before this boundless tract of country, inhabited by wild and vigorous tribes, could have been brought over to Brahmanism!”

I must beg my European readers not to expect to find in these hymns and songs the sublime poetry that they meet with in Isaiah or Job, or the Psalms of David. ”To me,” says Professor Wilson, ”the verses of the Veda, except in their rhythm, and in a few rare passages, appear singularly prosaic for so early an era as that of their probable composition, and at any rate their chief value lies not in their fancy but in their facts, social and religious.” Professor Cowell, also, says: ”The poetry of the Ṛig-Veda is singularly deficient in that simplicity and natural pathos or sublimity which we naturally look for in the songs of an early period of civilisation. The language and style of most of the hymns is singularly artificial......Occasionally we meet with fine outbursts of poetry, especially in the hymns addressed to the dawn, but these are never long sustained, and as a rule we find few grand similes or metaphors.” The worst fault of all, in the Collection regarded as a whole, is the intolerable monotony of a great number of the hymns, a monotony which reaches its climax in the ninth Book which consists almost entirely of invocations of Soma Pavamâna, or the deified Soma juice in process of straining and purification. The great interest of the Ṛigveda is, in fact, historical rather than poetical. As in its original language we see the roots and shoots of the languages of Greek and Latin, of Kelt, Teuton and Slavonian, so the deities, the myths, and the religious beliefs and practices of the Veda throw a flood of light upon the religions of all European countries before the introduction of Christianity. As the science of comparative philology could hardly have existed without the study of Sanskrit, so the comparative history of the religions of the world would have been impossible without the study of the Veda.

My translation, which follows the text of Max Müller's splendid six-volume edition, is partly based on the work of the great scholiast Sâyaṇa who was Prime Minister at the court of the King of Vijayanagar—in what is now the Madras District of Bellary—in the fourteenth century of our era. Sâyana’s Commentary has been consulted and carefully considered for the general sense of every verse and for the meaning of every word, and his interpretation has been followed whenever it seemed rational, and consistent with the context, and with other passages in which the same word or words occur. With regard to Sâyaṇa’s qualifications as an interpreter of the Veda there is, or was, a conflict of opinion among European scholars. Professor Wilson—whose translation of the Ṛigveda is rather a version of Sâyaṇa’s paraphrase—was firmly persuaded that he had a “knowledge of his text far beyond the pretensions of any European scholar, and must have been in possession of all the interpretations which had been perpetuated by traditional teaching from the earliest times.” Yet, as Dr. J. Muir has pointed out, Professor Wilson in the notes to his translation admits that he “occasionally failed to find in Sâyaṇa a perfectly satisfactory guide,” that “the scholiast is evidently puzzled,” and that his explanations are obscure. On the other hand Professor Roth—the author of the Vedic portion of the great St. Petersburg Lexicon—says in his preface to that work: “so far as regards one of the branches of Vedic literature, the treatises on theology and worship, we can desire no better guides than these commentators, so exact in all respects, who follow their texts word by word, who, so long as even the semblance of a misconception might arise, are never weary of repeating what they have frequently said before, and who often appear as if they had been writing for us foreigners rather than for their own priestly alumni who had grown up in the midst of these conceptions and impressions. Here......they are in their proper ground. The case, however, is quite different when the same men assume the task of interpreting the ancient collections of hymns......... Here were required not only quite different qualifications for interpretation but also a greater freedom of judgment and a greater breadth of view and of historical intuitions. Freedom of judgment, however, was wanting to priestly learning, whilst in India no one has ever had any conception of historical development. The very qualities which have made those commentators excellent guides to an understanding of the theological treatises, render them unsuitable conductors on that far older and quite differently circumstanced domain. As the so-called classical Sanskrit was perfectly familiar to them, they sought its ordinary idiom in the Vedic hymns also. Since any difference in the ritual appeared to them inconceivable and the present forms were believed to have existed from the beginning of the world, they fancied that the patriarchs of the Indian religion must have sacrificed in the very same manner. As the recognized mythological and classical systems of their own age appeared to them unassailable and revealed verities, they must necessarily (so the commentators thought) be discoverable in that centre point of revelation, the hymns of the ancient Ṛishis, who had, indeed, lived in familiar intercourse with the Gods, and possessed far higher wisdom than the succeeding generations..... It has never occurred to any one to make our understanding of the Hebrew books of the Old Testament depend on the Talmud and the Rabbins, while there are not wanting scholars who hold it as the duty of a conscientious interpreter of the Veda to translate in conformity with Sâyaṇa, Mahîdhara, etc. Consequently, we do not believe like H. H. Wilson, that Sâyaṇa, for instance, understood the expressions of the Veda better than any European interpreter; but we think that a conscientious European interpreter may understand the Veda far better and more correctly than Sâyaṇa. We do not esteem it our first task to arrive at that understanding of the Veda which was current in India some centuries ago, but to search out the sense which the poets themselves have put into their hymns and utterances. Hence we are of opinion that the writings of Sâyaṇa and the other commentators do not form a rule for the interpreter, but are merely one of those helps of which the latter will avail himself for the execution of his undoubtedly difficult task, a task which is not to be accomplished at the first onset, or by any single individual....We have, therefore, endeavoured to follow the path prescribed by philology, to derive from the texts themselves the sense which they contain, by a juxtaposition of all the passages which are cognate in diction or contents;—a tedious and laborious path, in which neither the commentators nor the translators have preceded us. The double duty of exegete and lexicographer has thus devolved upon us. A simple etymological procedure, practised as it must be by those who seek to divine the sense of a word from the sole consideration of the passage before them without regard to the ten or twenty other passages in which it recurs, cannot possibly lead to a correct result.”^[3]

Professor Max Müller says: “As the authors of the Brâhmaṇas were blinded by theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their authority later and more sensible commentators, such as Sâyaṇa. Where Sâyaṇa has no authority to mislead him, his commentary is at all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never allow him to accept the free interpretation which comparative study of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient poets.”

Professor Benfey says: “Every one who has carefully studied the Indian interpretations is aware that absolutely no continuous tradition extending from the composition of the Veda to their explanation by Indian scholars, can be assumed; that, on the contrary, between the genuine poetic remains of Vedic antiquity and their interpretations a long-continued break in tradition must have intervened, out of which at most the comprehension of some particulars may have been rescued and handed down to later times by means of liturgical usages and words, formulæ, and perhaps, also, poems connected therewith. Besides these remains of tradition, which must be estimated as very scanty, the interpreters of the Veda had, in the main, scarcely any other helps than those which, for the most part, are still at our command, the usage of the classical speech, and the grammatical and etymological-lexicographical investigation of words. At the utmost, they found some aid in materials preserved in local dialects; but this advantage is almost entirely outweighed by the comparison which we are able to institute with the Zend, and that which we can make (though here we must of course proceed with caution and prudence) with the languages cognate to the Sanskrit,—a comparison which has already supplied so many helps to a clearer understanding of the Vedas. But quite irrespectively of all particular aids, the Indian method of interpretation becomes in its whole essence an entirely false one, owing to the prejudice with which it chooses to conceive the ancient circumstances and ideas which have become quite strange to it, from its own religious stand-point, so many centuries more recent, whilst, on the other hand, an advantage for the comprehension of the whole is secured to us by the acquaintance (drawn from analogous relations) with the life, the conceptions, the wants, of ancient peoples and popular songs, which we possess,—an advantage which, even if the Indians owed more details than they actually do owe, to tradition, would not be eclipsed by their interpretation.”^[3]

A very different opinion of the value of the Indian commentators was held and expressed by Professor Goldstücker. “Without the vast information,” he says, “which those commentators have disclosed to us,—without their method of explaining the obscurest text,—in one word, without their scholarship, we should still stand at the outer doors of Hindu antiquity.” He ridicules the assertion that a European scholar can understand the Veda more correctly than Sâyaṇa, or arrive more nearly at the meaning which the Ṛishis gave to their own hymns, and yet even this stanch champion of the Indian commentators “cannot be altogether acquitted (as Dr. J. Muir says and shows) of a certain heretical tendency to deviate in practice from the interpretations of Sâyaṇa.”

The last quotation which I shall make in connexion with this question is from Professor E. B. Cowell's Preface to his edition of Vol. V. of Wilson’s Translation of the Ṛig-Veda Sanhitá: “This work does not pretend to give a complete translation of the Ṛig-Veda, but only a faithful image of that particular phase of its interpretation which the medieval Hindus, as represented by Sâyaṇa, have preserved. This view is in itself interesting and of an historical value; but far wider and deeper study is needed to pierce to the real meaning of these old hymns. Sâyaṇa's commentary will always retain a value of its own,—even its mistakes are often interesting,—but his explanations must not for a moment bar the progress of scholarship. We can be thankful to him for any real help; but let us not forget the debt which we owe to modern scholars, especially to those of Germany. The great St. Petersburg Dictionary is indeed a monument of triumphant erudition, and it has inaugurated a new era in the interpretation of the Ṛig-Veda."

My translation, then, is partly based on the commentary of Sâyaṇa, corrected and regulated by rational probability, context, and intercomparison of similar words and passages. For constant and most valuable assistance in my labour I am deeply indebted to the works of many illustrious scholars, some departed, and some, happily, still flourishing. I am thankful to Sâyaṇa, my first guide to the hymns of the Rigveda; to my revered Master, Professor H. H. Wilson; to Professors Roth, Benfey, Weber, Ludwig, Max Müller, Grassmann, and Monier Williams, and Dr. John Muir and Mr. Wallis. I have also consulted, and shall probably make more use hereafter of, the works of M. Bergaigne and Dr. Oldenberg; nor can I omit to mention the Siebenzig Lieder des Rigveda by Geldner and Kaegi, Der Rigveda, by Kaegi, and Hymns from the Rigveda, by Professor Peterson of Bombay, all of which I have read with pleasure and profit.

But it must not be supposed that European students and interpreters of the Veda claim anything like infallibility, completeness, or finality for the results to which their researches have led them. All modern scholars will allow that many hymns are dark as the darkest oracle, that, as Professor Max Müller says, there are whole verses which, as yet, yield no sense whatever, and words the meaning of which we can only guess. As in the interpretation of the more difficult books of the Old Testament and the Homeric poems, so in the explanation of the Veda complete success, if ever attainable, can be attained only by the labours of generations of scholars.

The Hymns are composed in various metres, some of which are exceedingly simple and others comparatively complex and elaborate, and two or more different metres are frequently found in the same Hymn; one Hymn, for instance, in Book I. shows nine distinct varieties in the same number of verses. The verses or stanzas consist of three or more—generally three or four— Pâdas, semi-hemistichs or lines, each of which contains eight, eleven, or twelve syllables, sometimes, but rarely, five, and still less frequently four or more than twelve. As regards quantity the first syllables of the line are not strictly defined, but the last four are regular, the measure being iambic in the eight and twelve syllable verses and trochaic in these of eleven syllables. Partly by way of safeguard against the besetting temptation to paraphrase and expand, and partly in the hope of preserving, however imperfectly, something of the form of the Hymns, I have translated each verse by a verse syllabically commensurate with the original and generally divided into corresponding hemistichs.

The verses consisting of three or four octosyllabic lines are tolerably well represented by the common octosyllabic or dimeter iambic metre which I have employed. In other verses I have not attempted to reproduce or imitate the rhythm or metre of the original: such a task, supposing its satisfactory completion to be possible, would require more time and labour than I could spare for the purpose. All that I have done, or tried to do, is to show to some extent the original external form of the Hymns by rendering them in syllabically commensurate hemistichs and verses, as Benfey and the translators of the Seventy Hymns have done for a portion of the Ṛigveda, and Grassmann for nearly the whole of the Collection.

For further information regarding the Ṛigveda the English reader is referred to Max Müller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, and Weber's History of Indian Literature; or if a simpler and more popular exposition be required, to Mrs. Manning's India, Ancient and Mediæval, or to Kaegi's Der Rigveda, of which an English translation has recently appeared. The student who reads German and French will, as a matter of course, consult Ludwig's great work Der Rigveda and Bergaigne's Etudes sur la Religion Védique.

To conclude, my reasons for publishing this work are chiefly these there is at present no complete translation of the Ṛigveda in English, Professor Wilson’s version—of which the last two volumes have only lately appeared—being “only a faithful image of that particular phase of its interpretation which the medieval Hindus, as represented by Sâyaṇa, have preserved,” and, moreover, the price of Wilson's six volumes—upwards of ninety rupees —puts the work beyond the reach of the great majority of readers in India.

I can hardly hope that my work will find acceptance with Pandits and Indian scholars inasmuch as I venture to deviate both widely and frequently from Sâyaṇa whom they have been taught to regard as infallible. No arguments are likely to shake this belief. Nothing short of a course of study similar to that to which the leaders of the modern school of Vedic interpretation have devoted half their lives will enable them to see with our eyes and accept our views. I trust, however, that they will at any rate give the leaders and the followers of this modern school credit for deep devotion to ancient Indian literature and due admiration of the great Indian scholars who have expounded it; and will acknowledge that these modern scholars—however mistaken their views may appear to be—are labouring sincerely and solely to discover and declare the spirit and the truth of the most ancient and venerated literary records that are the heritage of Aryan man.

R. T. H. GRIFFITH.

Kotagiri, Nilgiri:

May 25th, 1889.

Note.

This second edition of my translation is in the main a reprint in compacter and cheaper form, with some corrections and other improvements in text and commentary, of the original four-volume edition.

R. T. H. G.

Kotagiri:

15th October, 1896.

1. The History of Indian Literature, by Albrecht Weber. Trübner’s Oriental Series, 1878.
2. Who as ambassador of Seleucus resided for some time at the court of Chandragupta. His reports are preserved to us chiefly in the Ίνδικά of Arrian who lived in the second century A. D.
3. On the Interpretation of the Veda, by J. Muir Esq.